


Split Reality

by just_chiara



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Abusive Partner, Abusive Relationship, Angst, Comment Fic, Criminal Minds Kink Meme, Happy Ending, Injury, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-26
Updated: 2012-05-26
Packaged: 2017-11-06 01:47:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/413371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_chiara/pseuds/just_chiara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reid's mind is constantly switching between two versions of reality. In one of them, he's in a happy relationship with Morgan. In the other one, he's in an abusive relationship with someone else. He can't tell which one is real and which one is not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Split Reality

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 7th Criminal Minds Kink Meme.

He was pressed against the wall, one arm pinned over his head, the other twisted painfully behind his back. Every time he tried to escape, a sharp twinge of pain in his shoulder made him collapse back against the wall.

“I was working,” he said again. “I had to stay late to finish some paperwork. I wasn’t with Morgan. I swear.”

It was the truth. Not that it mattered: his boyfriend wasn’t going to believe him anyway. Spencer knew what was coming next. He was ready for the pain.

But when he closed his eyes shut, all he felt was a gentle hand stroking his hair.

“Spencer? Spencer, c’mon, wake up.”

Derek’s voice. He moaned softly into the pillow, as he struggled to make sense of what just happened. He focused on his surroundings. Even without opening his eyes he knew where he was: in bed, with Derek, in Derek’s house.

“Baby, it was just a nightmare. Open your eyes, will you?”

Just a nightmare, yeah. The same nightmare over and over again. Not always the same, more like variations on the same theme. Only – only it didn’t feel like a nightmare. It felt so real, just as real as this felt. The cold, hard wall against his face. The pain. The voice.

Maybe he was losing his mind. That was it.

He was hallucinating.

He wasn’t quite sure which one was the hallucination and which one was reality, though.

Derek’s hand on his neck, rubbing his tense muscles soothingly, felt real enough. He decided it didn’t matter. Not right now. Turning around to lie on his back, he looked at Derek.

“Whatever it was, it was just a nightmare. You’re safe here,” Derek said.

He nodded and buried his face in Derek’s shoulder, willing his body to relax in his arms. This felt good. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t real all that mattered was that right in that moment, Spencer felt safe and loved.

* * *

“What’s going on?”

Spencer acted surprised. “What do you mean?”

Derek wasn’t fooled. “You know what I mean. You just flinched. You haven’t done that since we first started dating.”

Spencer used to do it a lot. Flinch away from his touch. Tense when Derek reached for contact. But not anymore. Not in the last two years. And never like that.

Something was up.

Spencer just shrugged. “I was just focused on this book. I didn’t hear you—” 

“Bullshit.”

The way Spencer backed away from him when he raised his voice, gave Derek all the confirmation he needed that something was really wrong.

Slowly, he reached out to take his hand. “Talk to me, baby.”

Spencer sighed and closed his eyes for just a second to collect his thoughts—

—and he was back on the other side.

The other side of his life. Of his mind. Of his reality.

The smell of smoke was powerful and sickening. Too strong to be a trick of his mind. The room was almost completely soaked in darkness. He was cold and the floor felt wet and sticky with beer under his fingers.

Then came the pain. His left shoulder and arm were stiff and sore, but it was his knee that was aching so badly he thought he was going to be sick. He bit his lip against the pain and rested his head back against the wall. He didn’t even try to get up.

“Were you thinking about him? Were you with him in your head? I saw you smiling.”

He shook his head quickly. It made him feel dizzy.

“You’re lying!”

Spencer knew better than to deny it. “I think you broke my knee,” he said instead. At least that was true.

“You don’t deserve this.” A needle was waived in front of his eyes. “But I’ll give it to you anyway. Just promise you will dream of me, not of him.”

“No, please. I don’t want it.”

Too late. The needle was already in his arm. The drug was being released in his blood. His vision blurred. “Please, Tobias, don’t—”

His first thought when he opened his eyes was, _This feels nice_. His second thought was, _He’s going to hurt me again when he finds out._.

He was on the couch, nestled in Derek’s embrace, and it felt wonderful. Almost too wonderful to care about what would happen once he woke up.

“You alright, there, Spencer? You spaced out on me for a while.”

“Just thinking about the case,” Spencer said, absent-mindedly. He rested a hand on his knee. It didn’t hurt, but it felt weird. Some sort of ghost pain. Like his body in the dream remembered what reality was like.

This was a dream, he had decided. He had created this world to protect himself, to have somewhere to escape when things got too bad. Or maybe the drugs created it for him. This perfect slice of paradise, just imperfect enough to feel real.

Derek’s hand joined his on his knee and their fingers laced together. “Your knee okay?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Spencer forced himself to smile.

“You fell down the stairs yesterday.” Derek was looking intently at him now, trying to figure out if he actually remembered it happening. “The unsub pushed you. You said it was just bruised, but…”

“It’s fine.” Spencer cut him off. He remembered. Sort of. The way you remember a dream. He couldn’t really focus on the details, but now that Derek had told him, he knew it must have happened.

Not for real, of course. Just dream-happened.

Did it make sense at all?

He got up and walked away from Derek. “I need some time to think about something.”

He knew he was making Derek worry. But if this was just a dream – and it was – it didn’t really matter. The real Derek was in his own apartment right now, watching a game, or maybe out dancing with someone. Someone who wasn’t damaged like Spencer was. And the real Spencer was sitting on the floor of Tobias’s apartment, with a broken knee and drugs pumping into his veins.

Something didn’t make sense. He was forgetting something. Something important.

He stumbled a little on his way to the bedroom. He felt Derek following him, but closed the door and locked it.

He took a deep breath.

And it came to him. Tobias was dead. He killed him.

Wrong. He was only dead in the dream. And if he found out Spencer had killed him in his dreams, he would be mad.

Another deep breath. His head felt like it was about to explode. Derek was calling his name on the other side of the door, but he might as well had been on the other side of the world.

He looked down at his hands. He needed to focus. There was something his mind was missing. He looked around.

This wasn’t Derek’s house, or his own. It was his parent’s bedroom from when he was a little. He was dreaming. He knew it for sure now.

He willed his eyes to focus on the wall behind the bed. There was something there. A word, written in black capital letters in his own handwriting. His unconscious mind was trying to tell him something, but the letters were too blurry to read.

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Nothing changed. His eyes weren’t the problem.

There was something he was missing. He moved forward towards the black lettering, squinting his eyes. Another step. His knee was aching. Throbbing. Burning.

He looked down. His leg was covered in blood.

Eyes back on the wall in front of him.

A single word.

_Morpheus._

And just like that, he _knew_.

He had to wake up. From this dream, from the other dream. From the perfect, fake reality and the horrible nightmare.  
This was not his life. His real life was calling him. Derek – the real Derek – was calling him.

* * *

As soon as he opened his eyes, the white light almost blinded him. He closed them shut and moaned slightly. Someone squeezed his hand. _Derek_ squeezed his hand. He squeezed back.

“Welcome back to the land of the living.”

“What happened?”

His throat felt dry.

“You were shot in the leg. They had to give you something for the pain.”

He nodded slightly. “I dreamed… Is this real?”

The pain in his knee felt real enough. Then again, so it had in the dream.

He felt a hand smooth back his hair. “Of course it’s real.” Derek paused for a second. “Morpheus.”

_Morpheus_. Their safe-word.

Spencer leaned into Derek’s comforting touch. This felt right. And somehow, he just knew this was real.


End file.
